Baptists should heed mother’s plea

UNITED STATES
Associated Baptist Press

By Christa Brown

A mother, who says her son was repeatedly molested by a minister at one of the Southern Baptist Convention’s largest churches, claims the church needs to come clean about a cover-up of child sexual abuse.

“I want people to know the truth,” she said in a written statement released to CBS News last Saturday. “The hurt our family endured … is indescribable…. The church never reported John to the police…. We ask that Prestonwood take responsibility for their cover-up, and to say they are sorry.”

After minister John Langworthy was allowed to simply walk away from abuse allegations at Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas, in the late 1980s, he went on to serve two decades as music minister at another prominent Southern Baptist church, Morrison Heights in Clinton, Miss. There, he recently received a 50-year suspended sentence for molesting multiple boys as young as 6. But Langworthy avoided prison time because, in the plea bargain process, prosecutors were concerned about the statute of limitations.

So, thanks to many years of secrecy surrounding his crimes, minister John Langworthy walks away with no prison time. But no one should overlook the fact that his crimes could have been disclosed many years earlier — and countless kids better protected — if only the leadership of Prestonwood had spoken up and reported Langworthy to police.

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